Asian nations unsafe for data privacy

Asian nations are not known as a very secure place to keep your digital data, a new report by secure data centre Artmotion suggests.

The report was built on data from the UN, World Economic Forum and Transparency International, among other groups. Entitled Data Danger Zones, it ranks more than 170 nations on how good they are at keeping data secure.

Unsurprisingly, Switzerland was ranked as the best one. But looking at Asian countries is where things get particularly interesting. Singapore has a risk score of 1.9 per cent, and is considered the safest Asian nation. Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea also made it in top 15, but it’s China and India which are dragging the region to the bottom of the list.

Even though the report calls China a “rapidly expanding data centre market”, it failed to make it in the top 50. India, as well, ranked poorly – it was 107th on the list.

“It’s very easy for businesses and individuals to forget the importance of physical location when selecting a cloud hosting service or data hosting provider,” says data privacy expert Mateo Meier.

“Especially in today’s volatile world, businesses need to not only consider data privacy regulations, but also take into account other risk factors such as political environments, geographic locations and physical infrastructure.

“In support of this point, the Data Danger Zones report examines over 3.5 trillion IP addresses in 170 assessing countries, providing one of the most comprehensive guides ever created for data safety. Through this analysis, we want businesses to be able to make a more informed decision of how and where to store their data, and have a better understanding whether or not it is truly safe.”